Best Posts in Thread: How to get rich by farming

OMG this thread is a fail before it even starts just farm netherwarts everyone knows that smh

Well, thanks, Peanut Gallery. It's true that the Farming job pays far more for nether wart than any other crop, and it's not even close. But it's not that simple, because once you've finished farming, you've got a product, that product has value on the marketplace, and things get a LOT more complicated.

ROTFL n00b! you think the stores are buying your weets? ever herd of /pwarp food??

No, I don't think stores are buying a lot of wheat, or other farm products, though you can occasionally find a new store and try to sell before they're full. But who says you have to sell to other users?

wat??

Villagers. Farmer villagers will gladly accept your wheat, melon, pumpkin, carrot, and potato crops. Librarians will take your paper, which you'll make out of your sugar cane. They will exchange them for emeralds, which, as it turns out, have a healthy demand in the human market, because they make an attractive building block for opulent buildings.

Now, let's crunch some numbers. We'll use the following assumptions:

• Level 0 farmer
• 12x12 plot farmed in the most efficient manner possible for that crop, with no wasted space, expressed as a percentile.
  
• Because some of these numbers are ranges (3-7 melon slices per melon, 7-12 melons per emerald), we're going to use the median of each range (so, 5 slices per melon, 9.5 melons per emerald) and multiply by the number of farmed blocks.
• Emerald exchange rate is 60 meebles each (this can obviously change depending on which shop you sell them at, or whether you offer them at your own).

The farming job will pay you:

Nether wart: $576
Cactus: $324
Melon/Pumpkin: $204
Wheat/Potato/Carrot: $140
Sugar Cane: $34.5

Notice that the top two are the ones that can't be traded to villagers. If you take your full yield to the villagers and trade it, sell the emeralds, and add that to what you got from the Farming job, then your total value for each crop would be:

Carrot/Potato: $1375
Pumpkin: $592
Nether wart: $576
Wheat: $560
Sugar Cane: $495
Melon: $442
Cactus: $324

So, Peanut Gallery, now nether wart is only the fourth most valuable, and it isn't even close.

wait your forgetting about levels! ALL of the money from netherwarts gets a level bonus, so if the market stays the same, netherwarts will eventually catch up!!

Yes. According to my calculations, nether wart begins to pay more than carrots and potatoes when you reach farming level 184.

...

However, even these numbers don't tell the whole story, because there are even more variables. For instance, growth rate: once a melon/pumpkin vine has matured, it'll produce new product way faster than it takes any of the others except for cactus and sugar cane. Are you going to visit your farm and tend to it often? If so, those products will yield even more for you. If you're only going to farm it once a day, then not so much.

Also: carrots, potatoes, and melons will all benefit from a tool with the Fortune enchantment. You'll get much higher yields, for much more emeralds, and much more money.

DUDE!! I AM PLANTING A WHOLE BETA TOWN WITH CARROTS AND POTATOES NOW!!!

Yeah, about that. It turns out that villagers will only take so many trades before they stop. You can often wait a few minutes and they'll trade again, but... and I don't understand the mechanics on this, I'm only reporting what I've seen... after doing this several times, they stop taking that trade for what seems to be hours. So, planting a ton of one or two crops won't do you much good unless you can also find a ton of villagers (if you do, /msg me!); you'll just be left with a giant pile of whatever you farmed.

So, if you're going to be a small farmer, specialization is fine, but if you want to scale up, you really need to diversify.

Some special comments on:

Nether wart: Every once in a while you might find a shop that'll take it, but honestly, with all the people who are all-in on this stuff, and the fact that you only need a little to brew potions, there's not much market demand. So, once you're done replanting, the best way to make money with your excess is to go to /pwarp igotwarts and plant it there. That'll bump your yields up by an extra 1.75 per stalk (plus your level bonus). Also, no matter what you're doing, nether wart should be part of the mix, because having it boosts your farming levels faster, which benefits all your other crops, too.

Sugar cane: The numbers used here assume a yield of 80%, which is based on a complicated farming pattern that most people are unlikely to use, instead favoring a pattern that yields 67%. Also, the numbers assume you break all three blocks individually, then replant the bottom one. Who farms it this way? Who wants to? For $34.5 measly meebles? Forget it. Yes, sugar cane has good value in villager trades, but forget about using it to boost your farm value. Just farm it the usual way, breaking the middle stalk, and letting the top one fall free on its own. Better yet: automate it.

Cactus: This suffers from the same farming problem as sugar cane, only it's worse, because no tool breaks it quickly (you can use up an axe, but it's still not faster than your hand), server lag means you end up rebreaking the same pieces over and over again, when a block reappears it'll damage you (and use up your armor if you're wearing it), lots of the farmed blocks will be destroyed when it touches another cactus block, and the stuff has limited market appeal... honestly, there are no reasons why cactus should be part of your farming mix. It's a worthless nightmare.

Melon: As noted above, the stuff grows at a great rate, and the yield is influenced by a Fortune enchantment, so don't count it out because of the low numbers here. If you're going to check your farm frequently, your yields will be a lot higher than shown here. It's not farmed nearly as much as some of the others, too, so you might get better value selling it to a shop than trading it for meebles.

Pumpkin: Like melon, it grows fast, so busy farmers will make more money, and there are some trades to be made in the marketplace at better rates than emerald trading. Even better... grab a stick, put a piece of coal on it, and you've got four torches that will get you four jack o' lanterns. There are some very good prices on those in shops.

ETA: Wheat: The numbers used here indicate the Farming job paying 1 meeble plus level bonus for breaking a wheat block, as listed in the /jobs info farmer. That isn't actually happening at the moment, and it isn't paying anything. I've filed a bug report. It's still tradeable to villagers, though, and it can also have applications if you decide to branch out into other industries. Wanna farm chickens? Butcher villagers take raw chicken for emeralds. Those wheat seeds will come in handy there.

 

Nerd.

 

No it will not anymore.
The new trade villager mechanics has it so that each trade you make with a villager (1 emerald) has a 20% chance of resetting the villager. I think it was 20%.